Friday, September 07, 2007

Online Game Services, Inc. (OGSi), a business unit of GNi, and BitTorrent, home to the global standard for delivering high-quality files and media over the Internet, announced at the Austin Game Developers Conference (GDC) that they have partnered to develop a download solution for online gaming.

Under the terms of the agreement, OGSi will augment its industry-leading games hosting and transport offering with BitTorrent’s peer-assisted content delivery service to create a world-class platform for game developers. The OGSi download platform will be offered to all OGSi online game customers with game download and video streaming requirements.

The peer-assisted download platform provides game developers an efficient and scalable content delivery solution, enabling a superior user experience. Unpredictable and unscheduled popularity of a game title is commonplace in the industry, and the cost to scale has often been prohibitive. With BitTorrent DNA, game developers can focus on providing the best possible user experience rather than provisioning infrastructure which may or may not be needed.

“By leveraging the efficiency of BitTorrent DNA, game developers using the OGSi platform won’t be punished for their popularity. In fact, with BitTorrent, the more popular the game is, the faster the downloads are for users,” said Ashwin Navin, president and co-founder of BitTorrent, Inc. “Although many gamers are already fans of BitTorrent, with DNA they’ll enjoy the most sophisticated BitTorrent client they’ve ever had, one which improves download performance and video quality without compromising game play.”

OGSi CEO James Hursthouse commented: “We are extremely pleased to be working with BitTorrent on this solution. We believe that the combination of GNi’s extremely high-quality network, along with the flexibility and reach of the BitTorrent DNA solution provides exactly the right balance of power, price/performance and quality that the games industry is looking for.”

The joint solution also allows developers to serve parts of the world where robust server infrastructure may not exist, and network connections are limited or erratic. All this without having to restart large game downloads when connections are lost. Lastly, the service provides game developers with detailed reporting and insights into the entire infrastructure including the managed BitTorrent peer network. Reporting from the edge of the network enables the most comprehensive view of the server, CDN, and peer-network activity from the user’s perspective, including download statistics and performance.

Under the agreement, both parties are evaluating the expansion of their pre-existing relationship in the form of additional data center services from GNi and support for BitTorrent’s Center of Excellence, which will provide real-time demonstrations of peer-to-peer download acceleration. OGSi will continue to operate its worldwide online games hosting infrastructure to provide hosting service to game developing companies, from beta stages through full commercial ramp-up, providing rock-solid 24/7 support, competitive pricing and passion for gaming ensure the maximum possible return for their customers. BitTorrent will continue to exclusively develop, maintain and offer the BitTorrent client software, both as an executable and software development kit (SDK).